#“Don't cry for me angel”

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 11

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's note: Issuing an apology for making people panic earlier this afternoon. Sorry y'all. It was kinda fun though. I promise if an MCD tag was needed it would be there (spoiler: It's not needed)

---

November 19 Nassau Bay, TX

“Buck?”

“Gale? We don’t have to go. Helen’s on console. We can stay here.”

“Maybe you should sit back down, take a minute.”

“Gale? Can you hear me?”

“I need you to breathe, Gale. Please.”

“Look at me.”

Hey doll, look at me. 

Gale’s eyes snap to Benny, who is watching him with the same wariness with which you’d regard a spooked animal. His hands are up, placating, as he sits on the edge of Gale’s mattress. Gale realizes that, at some point in the course of this conversation, he threw the blankets to the floor and scrambled out of bed. He’s on his feet, sheets wrapped around his ankles, and he’s stopped breathing again. Pepper and Meatball are standing beside him, whining. They know something’s wrong. He feels like he might throw up. His chest burns from holding his breath. 

He wants it to burn.

“I need you to breathe for me, Gale,” Benny instructs. He stands and reaches out to put his hands on Gale’s shoulders, but Gale stumbles backward, pressing his back to the wall. The only person he wants to touch him right now is his husband, and his husband is on the moon, unconscious and dying. He doesn’t know why he can’t stand the idea of someone else’s hands on him. His brain isn’t working right. His eyes dart from Benny to the dogs to his own bare feet and back.

Hell, he feels like a spooked animal. 

“Okay, okay.” Benny yields, stopping with his hands up in surrender. He’s acting calm, but Gale knows him. He can tell Benny is starting to panic, and it’s because of Gale. “Just take a breath for me, okay Buck? Breathe with me.”

Benny takes a deep breath in, watching Gale carefully. Then he breathes out. In. Out. In. Out. Gale is staring back at him, completely still. He watches the exaggerated motion of Benny’s chest expanding and contracting, and he knows he’s supposed to do it, too. 

His chest burns.

He flexes his hand and feels the metal of his wedding band dig into the skin. 

Breathe, he tells himself. Or, more accurately, he hears Bucky’s voice in his head. Breathe, angel.  

So Gale takes a breath. Benny sighs in relief, nodding his encouragement. Gale exhales. He forces the mechanical motion of his lungs, drawing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. He forces himself to keep doing it, even though he doesn’t know if his other half can do the same.

“We… we aren’t sure he’ll survive the trip back to the lander.” That’s what Benny just said a moment ago, sending Gale spiraling. The words ring in his head, back and forth and back and forth like a ping-pong ball trying to break out of his skull. 

We aren’t sure he’ll survive the trip back… he won’t survive. 

    We aren’t sure he’ll survive, 

Back to the lander… 

     the lander,

The lander.

Aren’t sure

      we aren’t sure… aren’t sure he’ll survive survive survive survive survive. 

Survive.

Won’t survive. He won’t survive. 

Benny handed the console over to Helen the moment she arrived, right as Curt was getting Bucky’s body back onto the rover. It was a hell of a bad time to change CAPCOMs, but it was understood among flight controllers and crew alike: Benny had to get to Gale 

Benny sighs, sitting helplessly back down on the bed. “Gale, we don’t expect him to… it would be nothing short of a miracle if he…” He can’t finish the sentences. Doesn’t want to. Can’t bear delivering this news to his friend. But it doesn’t matter. Gale knows, and the only thing he can hear is his own heartbeat, too loud in his ears. 

We aren’t sure he’ll survive. We don’t expect him to survive. 

“I’m so sorry.”

Bucky was alive when Benny ran out of Mission Control. But the seemingly infinite time between catastrophe and salvation is a no-man’s land, and no one can be sure what injuries and suit damage Bucky sustained until Curt gets him back through the airlock. All they know now is he’s unconscious, his suit pressure dropped far too much far too fast, and his vitals are too weak. 

And now Gale has to fight to breathe, too.  

What would you say differently, if you knew the last time you talked to someone might be just that – the last time? What would you tell them? Would you say things a little differently, use different words, speak in a different tone, express different thoughts? Would you try your best to shove every ounce of love you feel for them into every single syllable? 

What words can there possibly be for an eternal goodbye? 

Or is it not about the words at all? Maybe it’s about looking, touching, listening. So that when you let go, when they finally drift away, you can remember every trivial and yet crucial piece of them. Everything you loved and everything you hated and everything you wish you could hold close to your chest for just one more minute. One more day. One more lifetime.

How do you let go, though, when you know you’ll never hold on again? Do you let yourself drown in the sound of their voice, in hopes you never forget the exact resonance, the exact cadence, the exact rise and fall of their laugh and the way their smile twines through every word – the sound of how much they love you? Would you pay just a little more attention? Would you stare at them just a little longer, lingering on every feature that you want to etch into the canvas of your brain even though you know the picture will fade, leaving a hole in your heart and a pit in your stomach as you sob into their pillow and wonder why you’re not strong enough to carry the mantle of their memory for the rest of time. 

The human consciousness is not built to know which goodbye will be the last. Because that goodbye will burn you alive. It will pin you under the weight of grief until someone has to tear you away, kicking and screaming, because if you knew you were never going to hold the love of your life again, you wouldn’t ever let go. 

I love you.

Those are the last words Gale said to Bucky yesterday, when their goodbye was a when you come home, not an if you come home. How can there be anything more profound to say? If that goodbye had to be their last, what else is there? And yet here Gale is, wondering, obsessing, insisting that he should’ve said it better, said it more, said it differently. That he shouldn’t have let go. 

His husband. His best friend. The love of his life. 

Gale thinks there should’ve been something else to say. But he can’t think of it. He can’t think of anything. His brain is stuck. His body is stuck. 

John. 

“Gale?”

Gale is leaning with almost all of his weight pressed against the wall now, fists clenched tight at his sides beneath the cuffs of the too-big sweatshirt that smells, wrongly, like himself. No longer like John. He takes a deep breath in, and Pepper scoots closer to his side, nudging at his hand. Gale exhales and uncurls his fist so he can idly run his hand over the dog’s soft ears. She whines and pushes into the touch, eyes not leaving her person’s face. A good dog. A very good dog. 

“Gale?” Benny says again. “Are you with me?”

Gale nods slowly, but his eyes look right past Benny, out the window across the room, unseeing. It’s still raining.

“Why don’t you sit down,” Benny repeats. 

Gale doesn’t move, save for lips that he’s shocked are capable of forming coherent words. “I need to get to JSC.”

Benny shakes his head, reaching a hand out only to remember what happened just moments ago, and he leans down to scratch Meatball instead. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Buck. They’ll let us know when they know anything. I think you need-“

“I need to be there for my husband,” Gale bites out. “That’s my job. It’s my job.”

Benny averts his eyes, closing them tight. It’s a losing battle. Any other loved one, Flight would bar from being there. Any other loved one would have to wait for news. Any other loved one would only ever know exactly what NASA chose to tell them, no more, no less. But Gale isn’t any other loved one, and they don’t have a protocol for this, for an astronaut facing death while their spouse is working in Mission Control. He knows there was a long debate over whether or not to allow Gale to stay on CAPCOM for Artemis 3, but he insisted he could handle it, and Harding believed him. 

So Benny nods. “Okay. We’ll go. You gonna wear that?”

–

Gale looks at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the harsh light highlighting every sign of exhaustion. His hair is messy, hanging limp and shaggy over his forehead. His eyes are red and swollen, dark bags beneath them. The sweatshirt had been discarded in favor of a fresh white button-up and a black tie that Benny had nearly had to tie for him. But Gale had swatted his hand away and forced his own fingers to quit disobeying him long enough to finish getting dressed. He looks at himself now, and he can’t reconcile his own reflection with that of a man who was just told his husband may or may not be dead by the end of the day. It’s wrong. 

It’s all wrong.

He forces himself to stand up straight, shoulders back, like a good soldier, and he stares at himself hard in the mirror. He reaches for his comb, for his hair gel, and his cold fingers freeze in the air above them. He envisions himself styling his hair, brushing it back in a neat coif. It’s what he does every day, even though he runs his hand through it about twenty times an hour so that it’s pointless by noon. It’s what he does every single day, so why won’t his hand move?

Bucky always liked Gale’s hair in the morning, when it was messy and unstyled. He said it was cute, sexy, perfect – that it was special because Bucky was one of the only people that got to see Gale soft. “No just leave it like that,” he would plead, grinning as he wrapped his arms around Gale from behind, trying to wrestle the hair gel out of his hand. Gale would roll his eyes and snatch it back, slicking the gel through his hair before Bucky could stop him. They’d stare at each other in the mirror, and Bucky would slowly reach a hand up towards Gale’s hair, threatening to mess it up again. But Gale would snatch his fingers in his own, shaking his head, and Bucky would pull Gale’s hand back to press a kiss to his knuckles. 

Gale feels phantom lips on the back of his hand, and he considers not styling his hair after all. It doesn’t feel right, all of a sudden. He wonders if he really has to style it ever again, and he only has half a second to think about how that question is just absurd before an unwelcome answer smacks him in the face.

For the funeral. Have to look nice for the funeral. 

Gale about stops breathing again. And for a moment, it’s real. For a moment, he sees in the mirror a grieving man. For a moment, it’s not early in the morning of mission day 13; instead, it’s the day his husband will be laid to rest, a mile marker for the rest of Gale’s life without the love of his life.

For a moment, Bucky is gone, no doubt about it, and Gale is an island, alone in this world, lost without his other half to hold him above water or tether his feet to the ground. He’ll be forever in limbo as a newlywed, because they never got a chance to be anything more.

He’ll have to fly to Virginia, where Bucky will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery as per his wishes. “If I die, make sure I get the whole nine yards,” Bucky had said to him once, long ago. Gale can’t even remember when; they were just boys, really, the first time he said those words. The first time Bucky looked at him with the knowledge that wherever he was going, whatever he was doing, there was a decent chance he wouldn’t come back alive.  

Even then, Bucky knew that the kind of life he intended to live may not be a long one. It’s a risk he took with no hesitation, sacrificing time for living exactly the way he wanted to. Gale fell in love with him anyway, followed him to the ends of the Earth, because they were two halves of the same whole. 

“If I die, make sure I get the whole nine yards,” Bucky had said to him again, just months ago. Gale can remember exactly when; they were engaged, their wedding soon, the mission looming over them, and Bucky was rewriting his will to reflect his new and rightful next of kin. 

Gale hadn’t wanted to discuss it, even though he knew they had to. A little-mentioned and not at all glamorized consideration of diving headfirst into the unknown – the what-ifs, the contingencies, the acknowledgement of putting your life on the line and what that will mean for the people who love you most.

“I know it’ll hurt,” John told him that day. “But if-“

“Bucky-“

“If things go south, Gale. I need you to know-“

“Don’t.”

“Buck,” Bucky sighed. 

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

Gale may never know what Bucky had been trying to tell him that day, and that thought claws at his throat. Why hadn’t he just let him say what he wanted to say? Why couldn’t he give him that peace of mind? Why had Gale been so selfish, in that moment?

If nothing else, he’ll give Bucky the whole damn nine yards, everything he deserves.

He’ll have to request a flyover. The request will be granted, he’s sure. The Department of Defense will spare no expense; Major John Egan, U.S. Air Force, the first man to die while stationed on the moon, will receive any honor Gale asks of them. Bucky would like that. He would be proud of that. 

Four jets will soar over his funeral right before the sun sets, friends and family looking on as they approach, the buzz of the engines rising with their love and grief. One aircraft will lift up and away towards the heavens, a missing man leaving the others to continue on without him, a gaping hole in the formation to match that which has been left in the lives of Bucky’s family. A symbol of the fallen, a symbol of the future he sacrificed, a symbol of a life lived and taken away. 

As an Air Force Major, Bucky will receive full military funeral honors. Lines of airmen will march behind his casket, escorting him to the next unknown. A color guard will carry the flags, rising and falling in the breeze as if they, too, are offering a final salute. A military band will wail down the hallowed paths between rows of gravestones. Seven riflemen will fire a three volley salute, and with measured steps and trained precision, the pallbearers will transport the casket to its grave. It will be draped with a flag, to be folded and given to the deceased airman’s next of kin.

How many times has Gale been one of those pallbearers? One of those unsmiling men charged with delivering an American hero to their final resting place. More than he cares to count, in any case. That’s just how being an Air Force pilot goes sometimes; a lot of good men and women are lost too soon. 

He never expected to be on the other side. Never expected to be the devastated loved one looking on, trying to decide if he can allow himself to cry, or if he should breathe through gritted teeth and act like a good soldier, as expressionless as the pallbearers carrying Bucky’s body in hands that never knew him the way Gale’s did. It comes so easily, playing the part of Major Buck Cleven, keeping the walls up and sandbagged against the flood threatening to drown him. 

Is he an airman, or is he a husband?

Or is he a widower?

Is it an affront to John’s legacy if Gale doesn’t cry for him as his body is returned to the earth, nothing but stardust and a memory carved into Gale’s soul? Gale can imagine him saying “don’t cry for me, angel” just as easily as he can imagine him saying “you better cry for me, babe,” and Gale is struck by the paralyzing panic of not knowing. He doesn’t know what Bucky would want. How can he not know? Shouldn’t he know? 

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t know what his husband would want him to do. He doesn’t know how to keep going. He doesn’t even know who he is without John Egan at his side. 

He doesn’t know…

He never expected…

He’s not sure what, exactly, he did expect. For him and John to go down together or not at all? That’s the way they’ve lived their lives for so many years, to the point that Gale is hardly sure where he ends and Bucky begins. They’re tied to one another, an invisible string in the form of a name, a silent and resounding commitment engrained deep in the blueprint of their life, as if their mutual coexistence is written into the laws of their universe. 

One cannot exist without the other. Buck and Bucky, it’s just how the world is meant to be.

Gale never expected to be forced to sit in the front row of a military funeral, clothed in the exact same dress uniform as the casket team committing his dead husband’s body to the Earth. He’ll sit, straight-backed and composed, in those uncomfortable chairs. He’ll stand and salute, Benny and Marge on either side, as other men hold the flag aloft over his husband’s casket, quiet and somber as the bugler plays Taps into a descending dusk that promises to surrender the fallen flyboy to a peaceful rest. The mournful, haunting notes will ring out over white marble headstones, calling home an extinguished soul, and Gale will have to use every last ounce of composure he has not to scream. He will watch, unblinking, as the flag is folded into a neat triangle, the crisp white stars facing the open sky like a final reminder that among the stars is where Bucky died. 

Gale will sit silently, unable to say a thing over the painful lump in his throat, and he will wonder if he’ll ever breathe easily again. He’ll wonder if the hands of grief will ever unwrap their chokehold on his lungs, or if that’s the price he has to pay for living when John couldn’t be afforded such luxury. He will resent the prospect of living this life without John’s hand on his, holding him close, kissing his cheek. He will fear the day he can no longer recall his smile from memory alone, his laugh, the feeling of his arms wrapped tight around him. He will grieve, and he will wonder if the grieving will ever end. 

How can it possibly end when a piece of you will be missing forever?

Gale will feel his heart break for the millionth time, a plummeting, debilitating feeling that will assault his entire being on repeat every single day. He will feel sick, tired, angry, alone. He will feel like he died in the same breath that his husband did, and he will have to force his lungs to keep working because if he doesn’t, he fears his body will simply give up altogether. He will bite his cheek until he tastes blood on his tongue to keep the agonized cry from tearing out of his chest. 

He will wish he’d gone down at Bucky’s side. 

And yet he will stare straight ahead as an officer kneels before him. They’ll hand the flag to him, unsmiling, eyes filled with an odd comfort and a shared sorrow that can never truly match the sorrow that is threatening to bury Gale alive. But Gale will take the folded flag in his hands, shaking fingers gripping the fabric far too tight because it’s the closest he’ll ever get to holding John’s hand one last time. The only reason Gale will remember what the officer says to him in that moment will be because it’s standard, because he’s heard these words time and again said to the distraught loved ones of other soldiers. 

He’s one of them now. 

“On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Air Force, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

So scripted. So simple. And yet it will twist like a knife into what’s left of Gale’s heart. A finality. Those are the words that Bucky would want Gale to hear, if nothing else because they’re what Gale is prepared to hear. If nothing else, because they are the words that have been slated for his death since the moment of his birth, since the moment the universe put forth such an uncontainable force as John Clarence Egan. 

Gale will sit there, his hands clutching a tri-folded flag that he’ll have to find somewhere to display in a too-empty home as a final remembrance. Friends, family, fellow airmen will look on as he cradles it to his chest, bearing witness to a pain that they can only just barely begin to comprehend. 

And Gale will no longer be able to stop the quiet, anguished sob that rises from his constricted lungs and finally breaks through the facade of Major Buck Cleven. Because Buck Cleven can’t exist without the man who gave him his name in the first place. 

–

“Buck? Are you okay in there?” 

Gale blinks, and his head clears. Benny is knocking at the bathroom door. 

It’s November 19, 2025. Mission day 13. 

Bucky isn’t dead. Not yet.

As long as that remains true, Gale has no choice but to assume that he will survive this, because if he doesn’t… well, Gale doesn’t know what he’ll do. Bucky has kept him steady for so long that he isn’t sure he can relearn how to keep himself afloat in time to come out the other side.

He has to believe that Bucky will make it, that he won’t abandon Gale here on this beautiful, terrible planet. That he’ll find a way, somehow, because that’s what Bucky Egan has always done. No matter the damage, no matter the stakes, he’s always, always come home. 

So what the hell is Gale doing standing here imagining his husband’s funeral? 

We don’t expect…

Staring into his bathroom mirror, Gale bites down hard on the inside of his cheek until he can taste the blood, and he locks eyes with his reflection. He watches the expression of grief and fear on his face twist into an ugly disgust and self-loathing, eyes dark with an abject ferocity that threatens to tear this world apart.

How could he, even for a moment, imagine his life without Bucky in it? How could he so easily give up hope? John deserves better than that.

Gale doesn’t really know how it happens, but he’s winding his right arm back, hand clenched in a tight fist, and before he can even blink, before he can even process the course of his own anger, his knuckles collide with the mirror. He doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t feel it. His ears are ringing and he can still see the reflection of his narrowed eyes and his set jaw in the shattered glass, now stained with blood. 

“Gale?” Benny calls out in alarm. He’s pounding at the door. Gale looks down at his hand, torn and bloodied, red dripping onto the tile floor by his feet. He wonders why he can’t feel it. “That’s it, I’m coming in.”

The door slams open, and Gale looks into the shattered mirror, spiderweb lines breaking the image into jagged puzzle pieces that just don’t quite fit. He watches the sadness and pain and shock flash across Benny’s face behind him in a stop-motion of emotion. “Fuck,” Benny mutters.

Gale raises his hand slowly, so he can inspect the cut flesh, and he thinks that, surely, he should be able to feel this right now. Surely, it should sting and burn. He tilts his hand back and forth and watches the blood trickle down, but Benny grabs him by the wrist. “Come here you idiot.”

Gale doesn’t protest this time. He lets Benny shove his hand under the faucet to rinse out the blood, lets him painstakingly remove the shards of glass with tweezers from the medicine cabinet, lets him dab the mosaic of cuts with rubbing alcohol. Slowly, he becomes aware of the pain, of the fact that his hand is throbbing as his body tries to mend itself. He wonders how it can do that, when he feels like there’s nothing left to mend.

When Benny places gauze over his hand and starts wrapping it with a bandage, Gale finally has the sense to do something. He grabs the bandage from Benny’s hands and starts winding it around and around his own fingers, securing it over his wrist. When he looks up at his friend, Benny is staring right at him, assessing him. “I’m fine,” Gale mumbles.

Benny shakes his head, eyeing Gale’s liberally wrapped hand, blood still staining his fingertips. “Yeah, you look so fine.”

Gale grits his teeth and looks down at the floor. “I have to be fine. It’s my job to be fine.”

“As a flight controller or as a husband?”

“Both.”

“I think you should stay here this morning.”

Gale looks up, and Benny tries not to take the furious glare being leveled at him personally. “Like hell.”

“Buck-”

“I’m going.”

Benny closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Fine. I’m driving you.”

“You’re off shift.”

Benny tilts his head, giving Gale an unimpressed look. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t trust you right now.” Gale supposes that’s fair. “And I’m scared as hell, too.”

“Someone’s gotta let the dogs out.” Gale has half a mind just to take them, walk right on into Mission Control flanked by two huskies. Who would stop him? 

Benny sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Then he turns to leave the bathroom. “I’ll ask one of the neighbors.”

Gale nods. “Ask Jane, across the street. Her little girl loves Pepper and Meatball.” What he doesn’t say is that Jane has a husband in the Navy, currently stationed overseas. If anyone is going to understand this situation without being overbearing with their sympathy, it’s her. “Tell her what happened. She deserves an explanation for being woken up this early.”

Then Benny is gone, leaving Gale alone with a bloody hand, a bloody floor, and a bloody mirror. He flexes his injured fist as much as he can with the bandage on, feeling the sting. Then he takes a deep breath and turns off the light. He doesn’t put any gel in his hair.

–

Mission Control goes utterly silent when the door at the back opens and Major Buck Cleven walks in. Major Buck Cleven, dressed in his usual slacks, white button down, and a black tie, ever the professional. His jaw is set, his back straight, his eyes hard. There’s little to give away the fact that he’s living his worst nightmare, save for the lack of product in his hair. Instead, his hair hangs messily over his forehead in a soft and unkempt way that few in this room have ever seen, and they don’t know what to make of it. The strangeness of it is menacing in its own way, a symbol that something terrible has happened, and yet it makes each and every one of them want to hug Gale tight and protect their CAPCOM at all costs.

And then there’s the fact that there’s a thick bandage wrapped tightly around his right hand, the edge stained with blood. For those who can see him up close, there’s tell-tale redness around his eyes, but he doesn’t look away. Anyone who dares to look at him, he looks straight in the eye. 

Marge shoots to her feet at the front of the room, an unreadable mess of surprise and empathy and sadness and fear plain as day all over her face. The other flight controllers follow her lead, rising slowly, solemnly. 

Harding, who had been alerted of the situation immediately and arrived at JSC not long ago, steps in front of Gale. He reaches a hand out, and Gale stares at him, daring him to hold him back. 

“Chick.”

Harding’s eyes are sad – which Gale hates – and he takes a deep breath. Some of these younger astronauts are like sons to him. John Egan and Gale Cleven, especially. The dynamic duo. The partners in crime. The newlyweds. Some of the best pilots – some of the best men – he’s ever known. His fear for John and his empathy for Gale clash uncomfortably, almost unbearably, with his commitment to this program. “You shouldn’t be here right now, Gale,” he says, as gently as he can. 

Gale clenches his jaw and shakes his head. “It’s my shift.”

“Helen’s doing a fine job.”

“She’s damn good at her job,” Gale agrees. “But you need three of us.”

“We’ll put Macon on.”

“Macon doesn’t know this mission like I do.”

“He can learn.” Harding matches Gale’s insistent gaze, and he watches the expression on Gale’s face twist into resentment. It breaks his heart, having one of his boys look at him like that. But he knows that grief is no state in which to work through a life or death situation, and he can’t in good conscience put Gale through that or sacrifice the well-being of the rest of the crew. Gale doesn’t speak. Harding sighs again, softening his features. “Go home, Gale. There’s nothing you can do for him here. We just have to wait.”

Gale feels the rage fill his body. He hardly even knows what happened, hardly even knows what the fuck he’s supposed to be waiting for. For his husband to either die or not? 

“He’s alive, then,” Gale says simply. 

Harding doesn’t reply for a long moment. Then, “We’ll let you know when-“

“Bullshit,” Gale sneers and shakes his head. “No. No. You are not treating me like some astronaut wife with no choice but to wait around in the dark until you decide to tell me what you think I should know. No.”

“I’m not trying to do that, Gale. I’ll make sure you’re updated on anything that happens. But I can’t put you on coms. I can’t risk the mission.”

“The mission?” Gale scoffs. “The mission!” How about Bucky’s goddamn life?  

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Harding insists. Gale can see the pain on Harding’s face, and he knows very well what he’s trying to say: that Gale isn’t capable of doing his job right now. That he isn’t stable or focused. That they need someone with less investment to make sure his husband keeps breathing and the mission keeps going and nothing else gets fucked up. 

Harding puts a hand on Gale’s shoulder. “I don’t think it’s the right choice to put you-“

“I am fully capable- get your hands off me.” Gale shakes Harding’s hand away and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he levels a hard, decisive stare at his boss. His voice is low and angry, carefully controlled. “I am fully capable of taking over CAPCOM. Don’t you dare act like I’m not. You know me, Chick. You fucking know me.”

Harding doesn’t say a thing, just watches Gale, evaluating the pilot and astronaut he knows Buck Cleven to be at the same time that he’s wishing he could make this better, take away the pain, save both of these boys from the unfairness of the universe. 

But these were discussions that were already had, months ago. They always knew this was a possibility, and Harding let Gale into Mission Control anyways. Granted, he hoped it would never come to this, but it was a judgment that he himself made. He decided that, in the event Bucky faced the worst, Buck would still be a reliable flight controller. 

Gale watches as these thoughts swarm through Harding’s head. “Let me do my job, Chick.”

“As a flight controller or as a husband?”

That damn question.

Gale feels his heart pounding, and he’s shocked to realize that his lungs are working of their own accord. Bucky is alive. So now Gale has to get to work. “Both.”

“Fine,” Harding agrees. “But I’m bringing Macon in to be briefed so he can take over if needed.”

Gale nods in silent agreement, and Harding squeezes his shoulder before motioning for him to go ahead. 

He looks out at the Red Shift flight controllers around the room, and he is keenly aware that most of them witnessed this entire exchange. They’re watching him warily, with varying levels of pity and empathy, but he just nods to them, too, and they track his motion as he walks past console after console towards the front of the room. The only people who don’t turn to look at him are Helen and Dr. Huston, who are laser-focused on working the crew through this.

Gale stops beside Albert Clark’s console, and the Flight Director reaches out to put a hand on Gale’s shoulder. He leans in close. “He’s sticking with us. Determined bastard.”

Bucky is still unconscious and relatively unstable, but Curt managed to get him inside the lander. Best they can figure from Curt’s account and the suit telemetry, the rover’s wheel broke going down the slope of Shackleton, and Bucky got stuck beneath the rover when it tumbled down. He hit his head pretty hard, and the oxygen regulator in his suit was damaged, causing both the pressure sensor and the mechanism that slowly decreases the pressure over a set period of time to malfunction. 

His suit depressurized from over 8psi to less than the minimum anticipated 4psi, which not only makes it hard for the body to take in enough oxygen, but the rapid depressurization can cause decompression sickness symptoms that vary in severity depending on how much nitrogen was left in Bucky’s body. He lost consciousness due to head trauma, but they remain concerned about the effects of hypoxia on the brain after being in low pressure for so long.

Since getting back to the lander, Dr. Huston, Helen, and Rosie have been in constant communication, monitoring Bucky’s vitals and guiding Curt through every step. He managed to get Bucky out of his busted suit, which he’ll inspect for damage later. He has Bucky breathing pure oxygen again, trying to get enough of it to his brain. EECOM increased the cabin pressure to nearly double the standard atmospheric pressure in an approximation of a hyperbaric chamber. Ideally, this will mitigate decompression sickness and assist with oxygen uptake in Bucky’s body. The external head wound itself was not serious, no doubt thanks to Bucky’s com cap softening the blow, but it did lead to a decent amount of blood loss. After cleaning away the blood to inspect the injury, Curt had to wrap Bucky’s head. He has no way of checking for brain damage on Starship as long as Bucky is unconscious. 

They’ve been running through abort scenarios, but with Orion at the furthest point in its orbit, it would take Starship almost as long to reach the crew capsule if they aborted now as it will for Orion to reach them on schedule. With Bucky unstable, they don’t think it’s a good idea to strap him into a launch vehicle until they know more about his condition, so he and Curt are staying put.  

After thanking Clark, Gale walks over to Marge’s PAO desk in the front corner of the room. He wraps his arms around her, and he can feel her trying not to tremble in his embrace. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispers, hugging him tightly back. “You should be here.”

Gale squeezes her a little harder, and she squeezes back, before they both let go. She reaches across her desk and picks up a cup of coffee, extending it towards him. “I picked this up for you. Benny told me you were refusing to stay put. What’d you do to your hand?”

Gale takes the cup in his good hand and glances at his bad one. He bites his lip in embarrassment. “Punched a mirror.” 

Marge scrunches her brow and tries not to laugh or cry or say much of anything. “They’re trying their best for him.” 

“I know,” Gale whispers back. He takes a sip of coffee, letting the bitter taste burn his tongue. Then he walks to his own console, patting Croz on the shoulder as he passes, and he and Benny flank Helen on either side.

She looks up at them both, and Gale sees exhaustion on her face that mirrors his own. “Curt’s checking for other injuries, now that we’ve got the recompression and the head wound under control. He’s got a lot of swelling in his right lower leg,” she tells them, straight to the point. Gale appreciates that; he doesn’t need another person’s pity right now. “Curt was able to x-ray it. He’s got a non-displaced tibial fracture.” She points to an image on her computer monitor that Curt no doubt sent through moments ago. They’d tested the capabilities of Starship’s med bay their first night on the surface. They just never expected to have to use it like this.

The image shows Bucky’s tibia, a crisp line right through the middle. The separated pieces of the bone are perhaps just millimeters out of place. Helen hands Gale the second headset. Once it’s turned on, he finds that he’s tuned in to chatter between Curt and Rosie, who is trying to aid from Orion, thousands of miles away from the moon. “I need you to do this, Curt,” Rosie is saying.

Curt: “You have to be kidding.”

Rosie: “It’s not hard. Just tap it in.”

Curt: “I’m gonna make it worse.”

Gale looks at Helen, eyebrow raised. “Gotta set it,” she whispers. 

Well, shit.

Rosie: “You did it in training. You’re gonna have to do it now.”

Curt: “In training it was on a dummy.”

Rosie: “Think of it this way, it’s still on a dummy.”

Gale snorts, and he’s startled by the fact that laughter is possible right now. Helen smiles beside him.

Curt: “Fuck.”

Rosie: “Come on Curt. Just one little push. He’ll be pissed if he wakes up and learns I have to re-break his fucking leg to make it heal right.”

Curt: “Fuck, okay. Okay. One, two…”

Gale can hear Curt gagging as he presumably crunches the bone back into place, and he makes a disgusted face of his own as he nervously twists his wedding ring around his finger. The visual of Bucky’s leg, of all things, being unprofessionally set by Curtis Biddick, of all people, on the moon, of all places, makes him squirm.

Curt: “Okay, I think I got it.”

By the time Curt gets Bucky’s leg splinted and wrapped, Macon is there, making four CAPCOMs in Mission Control. Curt hasn’t identified any further injuries other than a mottled bruise-like rash on Bucky’s upper arms and abdomen, a symptom of decompression sickness that indicates Bucky still had some nitrogen in his blood when his suit depressurized. Rosie instructs Curt to monitor the rash closely for swelling and see if the recompression therapy alleviates it. 

Helen then alerts Curt that she’s handing the console over to Gale so she can find a nice cot somewhere in JSC and get some unrestful sleep before her actual shift starts later in the afternoon.

Benny decides to stick around a while longer, and the following couple of hours fall into a quiet and tense waiting game. Gale talks with Curt about his condition, Bucky’s condition, the lander’s condition, and EVA findings (which feel trivial now and yet remain necessary). He talks with Rosie and Alex about various observations and experiment results, including the behavior of certain medical devices and procedures in deep space (somewhat ironic). 

Around 7:00 GMT (3pm Houston time), Mission Control is uncharacteristically somber. A group of flight controllers that is usually focused yet friendly, collected yet outspoken, doesn’t feel much like talking at all. Benny left an hour or so ago to try and get some shut eye before Blue Shift takes over at midnight. At the end of their workday, Alex, Rosie, and Curt are all eating dinner, their coms off. EECOM had eased the pressure in Starship back down to normal, though if Bucky starts showing more decompression symptoms they’ll have to increase it again. For now, he’s as stable as he’ll get. 

Gale, Macon, and Croz are eating takeout sandwiches and playing I Spy, like children, in order to avoid thinking too much about the situation at hand.  

“Buck?” Curt’s voice sounds tired when he switches his coms on, a little wobbly with nerves. Gale has been through Hell today, and he can barely imagine what it’s been like for Curt.

“I’m here, Curt,” he says. There’s a long silence. “Curt?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t-” Curt cuts off, like he doesn’t know what to even say. Couldn’t what? Prevent this? Stop this? Do better? Do more? Fix it?

Gale doesn’t want to hear any of it. “It’s not your fault.”

“It was that wheel,” Curt insists. “If I had… I dunno. Done a better job fixin’ it? Told him not to drive it up that incline? If I’d gone with him?”

Gale closes his eyes, running a hand through his hair. Macon and Croz sit quietly beside him, eyes downcast. “It’s not your fault, Curt. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

When Curt is quiet, Gale turns off his mic so he can address Clark and Dr. Huston. “Fellas, where are we at?”

Dr. Huston studies his console, no doubt analyzing Bucky and Curt’s vitals. He looks up at Gale. “Tell him to rest. He should check on Bucky every hour, and we’ll wake him up if there’s a change before then. There’s nothing else he can do now.”

Gale relays the message to Curt, who predictably puts up a fight about it. “You’re no good to him or to us without some rest,” Gale argues. Curt finally, grudgingly, agrees. “And Curt?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

“Thank you.”

–

At 6pm, two hours after Gale was supposed to end his shift, Harding finally convinces him to go home. “No, Gale. Home. You’re not sleeping on a cot here. You’re going home.”

Since Benny left hours ago, Marge is tasked with making sure Gale gets home in one piece. He tries to tell her that she, too, should go home, but she insists on staying the night with him. No one trusts him to be alone right now, and he doesn’t really know what they’re so afraid of. As Marge pulls her car into his driveway, though, he looks down at his bandaged hand. With a frown, he realizes that maybe he doesn’t trust himself to be alone either. It’s dark, and he feels a loneliness and a fear creeping back into his head now that he’s not on shift, now that he doesn’t have any purpose other than to worry about John. 

He doesn’t want to be alone. So he tells her to go on in while he grabs the mail. 

As he closes the mailbox and glances through the flyers and envelopes in his hand – no threats, thankfully; that would probably about do him in – the front door of the house across the street flies open. He squints through the light of the streetlamps as Maggie, the little girl that lives there, comes tumbling out, red curls bouncing as she runs down the front walk. As if she only remembers at the last second, she skids to a stop at the edge of the road and checks both ways three times, even though their sleepy neighborhood street rarely has any cars going up or down its length. Like a game of red light green light, she goes from a halt to a dead run across the road, right towards Gale. 

“Mr. Cleven?” she says as she stops at his feet. There’s something pure and innocent about her voice that feels out of place in the dark turmoil of Gale’s mind, but it breaks through like the smallest ray of sunshine. He looks down at her. She hardly reaches his waist, and she’s grinning up at him, freckles dotting her little face like constellations. She told him once, when he babysat a few months ago, that sometimes other kids say mean things about her freckles. He shook his head and stood her right in front of her bedroom mirror. Kneeling down beside her, he pointed to a few of the freckles on her face, and he told her that she carries the stars with her everywhere she goes. 

“Space obsessed,” her mother, Jane, told Gale once. “Says she wants to be just like you.”

Now Maggie’s smile turns to a frown, and she looks at her shoes before slowly looking back up at him, as if she’s not sure that she’s allowed to. So instead he kneels down to her level, so she can look him in the eye. He motions to the piece of paper that she’s gripping in her hand, so tightly that there’s tiny, wrinkled, finger-shaped imprints on it. “What’s that you got there, Mags?”

He knows the smile he tries to give her doesn’t reach his eyes; it barely even reaches his mouth. But it’s the best he can give her, now. She juts the piece of paper towards his chest, turning it so he can see the drawing on the front, scribbled in colorful crayon. It’s an astronaut, no doubt, wearing a white EVA suit with a big helmet and the American flag across the chest. They’re standing next to a tall white triangle that Gale knows is a spaceship, and the ground – drawn as a straight line directly beneath the astronaut’s feet – is pockmarked with circles that he assumes are supposed to be craters. There’s stars in the messy blue sky. In what is unmistakably a child’s handwriting, the words “Feel Better Jon” are scrawled across the top in red crayon. The J is backwards and the h is missing, but there’s a little heart drawn at the end of his name. 

Jane must have told her that John got hurt up there – the reason they had to take care of the dogs today.

Gale feels his eyes threaten to well up, and he bites down hard on his lip as he takes the drawing from Maggie, willing his hands not to shake as he stares down at it. 

“It’s John,” Maggie explains. She rocks back and forth on her heels, watching Gale shyly. “He’s on the moon. And that’s his rocket, right there.” She points to the oblong tower that is Starship.

“So it is,” Gale says. He’s surprised by the small chuckle that erupts from his chest, and he’s even more shocked to see a drop of water fall onto the drawing, leaving a wet spot in the corner. He tries to wipe it away with his thumb. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he tells her, squeezing his eyes shut for a second, trying to compose himself. When he opens them again, though, Maggie reaches out with her small hand, and she wipes another tear off Gale’s cheek. 

“I know he’s not here,” she says, pulling her hand slowly away. “But I thought you could give it to him when he comes home.” 

Gale looks at her, and he feels like his heart has been shredded to pieces for the hundredth time today, simply unable to beat anymore. Maggie watches him sadly, and Gale hates himself just that little bit more. He’s the adult here. He shouldn’t be making this kid sad. He shouldn’t-

But then Maggie throws her arms around his neck, nearly toppling him over. “He’ll come home,” she says, not a single doubt in her voice. “He has to. He promised he’d teach me how to ride a bike.”

Gale can barely stop the gasping sob that tries to primally tear its way out of his mouth, but he winds his arms around the little girl and holds her close, clutching the drawing so tight behind her back that he makes bigger finger-shaped imprints right next to hers. “Thank you,” he whispers. 

He looks up, over Maggie’s shoulder, and sees Jane standing on the front porch. She lifts a hand in a wave. When Maggie lets go, Gale takes her hand in his and leads her back across the road, stopping to check each way. On the porch, Jane sends her daughter into the house.

“Thank you,” Gale says to her. “For watching the dogs. And for this.”

“That was all her idea,” Jane says with a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes any more than Gale’s reached his. “I’m sorry to hear about John.”

With little left to say, Gale thanks her again, promising to update her, before heading back across the street. Inside his own house, Marge has the news playing on TV. Harding is standing at a podium in one of JSC’s newsrooms, explaining to the whole world that Mission Commander Major John Egan has suffered a near-fatal accident and is in unstable condition.

Gale stares at the television, his vision tunneling, as he stumbles backward until the backs of his legs hit the front of the couch.

Near-fatal.

Unstable.

If we’re lucky the fag will die up there.

Might not survive.

Nothing short of a miracle.

After Harding answers a small handful of questions from disgustingly over-eager reporters and walks out of frame, the screen shifts to a news anchor, who highlights what the director of the Human Spaceflight Program just said. As the broadcast ends, she looks gravely into the camera, and her words add to those that have been ringing in Gale’s ears on repeat all day. 

“Our hearts go out to Major Gale Cleven and the entire NASA community at this time.”

Gale doesn’t know if it’s those final words or the child’s drawing gripped between his fingers or the fact that the whole world now knows about Bucky’s accident or the horrifying realization that all of the hateful skeptics who prayed for his husband to die just might see their wishes come true… but that’s the moment his body gives out.

The room spins in slow motion, walls closing in. His throat closes up. The breath rushes from his lungs. His head is pounding, his fingers grasping for something, anything to keep him above water. 

John. 

“Gale?”

“Gale, honey, are you okay?”

“Can you hear me?”

“Gale, look at me.”

Gale barely comprehends the fact that, somehow, he ended up crumpled on the floor in front of the couch, his bad hand pressed to the floor and the other clutching the drawing to his chest like that damn tri-folded flag at an airman’s funeral. He barely comprehends Marge sitting beside him, but she pulls him into her arms. He turns to her, and she puts her hand on the back of his head, guiding him to rest against her so he can hide in the crook of her neck. He cries into the fabric of her blouse, and he has half a mind to feel bad about it, but his entire world is falling away too fast. Hiccupping sobs fill the silent living room and wrack his entire body as every tear he refused to shed, every emotion he refused to feel over the course of this entire mission, finally bursts out of him in an onslaught of all-consuming anguish. 

Marge shushes him and holds him tight, the only thing keeping him in one piece, telling him that Bucky's strong, that he'll find a way through. She rocks him back and forth like a child, and he just can’t seem to stop or to catch his breath.

His chest burns.

“I need you to breathe, sweetheart,” Marge says to him as she strokes his hair. “Breathe for me.”

He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

He can’t breathe. He can’t stop. He can’t keep going.

He can’t.

His hands scrabble at Marge’s back, holding on for dear life. 

He needs his husband. He needs John. He needs-

“Take a breath, Gale. Please.”

Don’t cry for me, angel. Just breathe.

---

---

Part 12

[angelsgame-au]

*sobbing*

[bucksangel]

so, take my tags, and I'll take yours, and if I die in this shitty fucking war, don't tell them we switched; let me be buried under your name - and some fifty years from now, you can be buried under mine.

[seeleybooth]

Oh, Buffy... God. I... I feel like I haven't seen you in months. Oh, my God, everything's so muddled. I...Oh, Buffy...

I  was about to take him out, and, um... something went through him... and  he was Angel again. He-he didn't remember anything that he'd done. He  just held me. Um, but i-it was... it was too late, and I, I had to. So  I, I told him that I loved him... and I kissed him... and I killed him.

[angeibody]

whatever the hell of an attempt this was

[depravedangelbaby]

just being a desperate mutt ♡♡

[ohharrypls]

I took this letter to a memorial but wanted to share here too.

"Thank you Liam so much for being in my life and shaping so many childhoods. Thank you for giving us love, support and encouragement through your and One Direction's music during the hard times and highlights of our lives.

You were a kind, generous and charitable person who encouraged so many to follow their dreams and be as kind as you were. You had the kind of smile that shone in your eyes, brighter than any star, and gave us so much comfort.

Thank you again so much for the music that helped me get through everything life threw my way.

I don't want to say 'goodbye' but instead see you later. Thank you for everything. You made me strong.

Rest in peace, My Angel

I can't say thank you enough, but truly thank you for everything Liam. I can't believe you're gone. I've lost count of how many days its been, but each morning I keep waking up expecting the news to change, but it doesn't 💔.

I keep saying each night "I'll see you tomorrow. Things will be different tomorrow.", just so I can sleep and have hope for tomorrow, but the news still doesn't change 💔. But one tomorrow, we all will see you again.

Songs I keep revisiting whenever I miss you tons is You're Beautiful by James Blunt and Drops of Jupiter by Train. I think they capture the type of person you were, beautiful inside and out. An angel. And at peace now. ❤️

Whenever I need reassurance, I'll look to the sky, because I know that's where you are now.

Rest well

[torvagatai]

considering how much he loves staying in and honing his brooding skills, it's kind of hilarious looking back that angel met both cordy and wes while he was at the club

[dilf-in-peril]

I'm sorry but no one does mania like he does

[oceanatydes]

bro i love huskerdust so much

[tothepointofinsanity]

what are your thoughts on Madoka and Sayaka's relationship? I always thought it was underrated for how complex and tragic it is.

Madoka and Sayaka's relationship function similarly to that of a knight and a princess, so both their friendship or couple pairing are interesting to me. It seems to be intentional that Sayaka was crafted with a knight motif in mind to click with Madoka's vulnerability. The tragedy is that Sayaka was way too young and inexperienced to be shouldering such expectations in a friendship. Taking up the role of a protector at every turn because she wanted to protect everyone has always been a contributing factor to how fast Sayaka burned out.

Contrarily, Madoka's struggle with her own helplessness throughout the show was also part of the reason why Sayaka said a lot of terrible thing to her, but deeply regretted her actions to the point where she succumbed to Witching out away from Madoka. Madoka, at least in this "final" timeline, was not there to see her own childhood best friend change into something else. To, in a way, "die", and be reborn as the same monster that all magical girls were hunting after in a frenzy. Homura was right that Sayaka brings Madoka grief — it seems that in almost timeline, since Sayaka becomes a Witch as long as she becomes a magical girl unlike Mami or Kyoko, Sayaka is a consistent source of Madoka's grief. Whenever Madoka becomes a magical girl, then, her aspirations are based on Sayaka's sacrifice and ideals, except Madoka actually has the power to "save everyone". I believe Madoka loved Sayaka as Sayaka may not have been an "effective" magical girl, but she was the one who was willing to sacrifice her soul for her ideals, regardless of how naïve they were. To Madoka, who was so ensnared by her sense of uselessness, Sayaka was the closest thing to an idol or a star for the courage required to be a magical girl. Sayaka's desire to make the world a safer and justified place for people was so inspiring to Madoka that even when Madoka becomes Kriemhild Gretchen, the Witch's whole gimmick is "creating heaven on earth, a Witch content only if there is no more grief in existence". A prospect deeply held onto by Madoka that even Gretchen embodies it.

It's probably why Madoka's wish to save all magical girls would definitely sound equally impossible to he audience and the incubators, but Madoka herself says, "If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time." Sayaka was often called foolish for her ideals and hopes, and Madoka was the only other person aside from Kyoko who understands Sayaka's struggles so much that she outright tells people that Sayaka was never wrong — this is how Madoka protects Sayaka. Madoka would never want anyone to say any of the magical girls' wishes were wrong or foolish. It was how Sayaka also found her peace at the end of the show: to be understood and not viewed as an object that would eventually be replaced in the cycle of magical girls and Witches.

Madoka and Sayaka eventually learned how to protect each other. Sayaka doesn't need to suffer from her own overbearing expectations anymore, and Madoka can finally be something even more to protect her angel: A God.

[theflyingfeeling]

did it hurt when you fell from heaven

[from BC tiktok 17.3.2024]

[quietwingsinthesky]

i just think that whenever one angel had to kill another they should have been more visibly distraught about it. i wanted to see anna stab uriel and watch his body fall in horror at what she'd been forced to do and castiel dragging his injured vessel to his side to weep over him. i think castiel should have lashed out even more at sam and dean every time he had to kill one of his siblings for them. i think he should have cradled rachel and balthazar's bodies as they died and been marked forever with the scars of their wings for it, to make him killing raphael and the hundreds in heaven even scarier when he doesn't show any remorse for it. i think inias and castiel should have both screamed when meg killed hester, even though there was no other choice, even though it was her or cas. i think dean and sam should have noticed something was wrong when castiel killed samandriel because he wasn't overcome with grief about it immediately and the only tears he shed were made of blood. i think cas should have stabbed hael out of fear of what she might condemn him to and then sobbed while holding her, telling her he's sorry that she won't get to see the world she once helped build and leaving her body even more scarred and bloodstained. i could go on.

[astoldbychae]

“Listen, lil mama...we’re all products of our past. Ain’t no changin’ that...but that don’t mean we gotta be prisoners of it...”

Welp...*blows the dust off drafts folder* 👀 

[depravedangelbaby]

hahaha what if u fisted me until i cried n begged u to stop??

[sherlock-is-ace]

.